Smiling

Oh look, it's a picture of me, or a caricature at any rate. My friend Ledge did this in celebration of my mad Cossack beard. But never mind the beard, it's gone now and who cares?


It's the expression on my face that's interesting. Look at that furrowed brow. Ledge drew this just after he and I had come back from a cafe in Mullimbimby (aren't Australian place names great?) where I'd met an Englishman keen to impress upon me the wickedness of Jewish people. He'd given me a bunch of articles to read, all of which extolled the virtues of racial purity. Sure enough, I'm the wrong fellow for this and I threw his stuff out, and then Ledge and I sparked up and spent the rest of the afternoon inventing mad worlds and laughing our heads off. We like a laugh, Ledge and I.

But never mind the ageing stoners, right there in the picture is the battle for my face. As I slowly approach fifty and the wrinkles get deeper, it seems it's a race of who-gets-there-first between the crow's feet I have from smiling, and the Billy Joel-esque furrow I get from frowning. And I'm wondering if the frown isn't winning.

Lately over at Su's place I've been struck, or a chord has been, by Su's, um, I don't know, having had enough of it all? Would I be wrong in imagining that what Su describes in this piece, followed by this (as a bookend of sorts) are variations of what we're all going through? Spending every day reading of the stepped-in-blood activities of the death cult PTB really does do your head in. 'Basta!' as the Italians say, 'Enough! I get it already.' Honestly, don't these self-impressed fuckers ever get sick of it? Their relentless revelling in filth and degradation, and all to keep themselves in Savile Row suits, super yachts, and rape victims. God help me - I'm sick of them, and I'm sick of their shit.

And my face tells me daily. The muscles through my jaw, temples, and forehead ache from the perpetual tension. I've mentioned before I have bad teeth. But they usedn't to be. They used to be the best teeth money could buy until I ground them down. And now every morning I wake up with an exhausted face.

And lately I've realised that the tension is there during the waking hours too. And whilst the answer is as simple as relaxing my muscles, this is easier said than done. I relax my jaw and within seconds I find it's back to its default 'jut' mode. It's like pushing water uphill, a Sisyphean battle.

Funnily enough, martial arts is, amongst other things, the mastery of relaxation. It took me years to understand even the basics of how to relax my limbs, and the variety of internal tension required for a good stance. And just lately the words of one of the instructors came back to me - 'Your face should have a slight smile on it'. I didn't think about it at the time since I was too busy with my hips, thighs, back and shoulders, but it's a thing worth keeping in mind. If anyone wants to know what the smile should look like exactly, just check a Theravadan statue of the Buddha.


With this in mind I remembered a documentary I saw about a Japanese Buddhist sect, wherein the practitioners would ritualistically laugh together. The priest declared that happiness makes you laugh and laughing makes you happy. And sure they looked like a pack of weirdos, but that's beside the point. The nerve pathways transmitting electrical signals from the brain to the muscles aren't a one-way street. The stimulus that drives the response can likewise be driven by that response. It's a bit like how sexual arousal will dilate the pupils, but dilated pupils will cause sexual arousal. This is why romantic dinners are candle-lit, and if you want to get laid, you don't go to McDonalds. Well, that and a thousand other reasons, ha ha.

But to hell with McDonalds, I've been smiling. And it's spooky how happy I feel. What starts out feeling slightly false, takes on a life of its own. Within seconds the smile ceases to be false and I feel good. And whilst this isn't about to instantly undo years of muscle memory and the tension it brings, it's easily better than me thinking 'relax' and then forgetting again one second later.

---

Sure enough, weltschmerz wouldn't be weltschmerz if one could knock it on the head merely by smiling. But it's a good start. A trip of a thousand miles starts with a single step. What with having had to relocate my internet venue to the next town over, all manner of things, of paths to be travelled, have revealed themselves to me. Down the road from the library is a yoga/meditation centre. In the other direction is an art supply shop. And as soon as I can find a camera store, I'll get back into photography.

I'm not about to abandon writing. It's far too much fun, and besides, I like reading my own stuff, ha ha. But that doesn't mean I have to spend all day head down in the laptop buried in misery. Not forgetting that anyone suffering from weltschmerz, overcome with dismay and despair, is doing precisely what they're meant to. The death cult laughs in derision. Yeah well, they can go fuck themselves. I refuse to behave as they expect.

I'll look at the world with my eyes open. I'll acknowledge the wickedness that exists. And then I'll respond in the manner of my own choosing. To hell with letting the world eat me alive. Rather, I'm going to view the world as my oyster, and then let's see who eats whom, ha!

Selflessness as a martial mindset

All behaviour lies on a continuum with selfishness at one end and selflessness at the other. Selflessness is superior to selfishness - this is self evident and inarguable. All sins are by definition selfish acts, and all virtues are likewise selfless. Only by the most perverse cavilling can selfish acts be defined as virtues. With selflessness as an ideal this cavilling can always be torn to shreds. If attacked from this angle no argument in favour of selfishness can be sustained.

Me, I think that this is bullet-proof. But, no one much cares for it. I can understand the temptation to write the whole thing off. Since the word selflessness appears nowhere in any public discourse, indeed is pre-emptively shot down in endless discussions that are variations of what's-in-it-for-me, the thought occurs that perhaps the whole thing is a silly idea, not really worth considering.


Frankly this is arse-about. Honestly, if selflessness was some silly thing, silly like Paris Hilton, the media would be all selflessness, all the time. Silly is what the bloc-media does best. I'm going to view it the other way around. Selflessness is absent from the general discourse because it is a thing to be feared. Not by us of course. Rather it's feared by the death cult PTB.

Think about interest, usury, money-as-debt, and the reserve banking system. The truth of this arrangement, ie. that it perversely brings no benefit to anyone but the absolute top of the pyramid with impoverishment for the rest, isn't utterly absent from all forums of discussion - the education system, the government, and the media - by accident. It's absent because if it was common knowledge the whole game would be over. Which is to say, it's absent because it's feared. No mistake, the death cult PTB are, beneath their smug, expensively coiffed exteriors, driven by fear.


Usury is one thing but selflessness is another. Usury is merely a means of delivering us to our fate. It's the truck that drives us to the abattoir; it's the conveyor belt; it's the rotating knives. A widespread discussion of usury would deliver into our hands the means by which we could take our sabots to the truck, the belt, the knives. A discussion of selflessness on the other hand is a discussion about the nature of this carnivorous cannibalism in toto. Certainly it addresses the means by which we are sliced and diced, but it goes further and attacks the whole concept of us being eaten at all, and suggests that perhaps we might find some other way of doing things.

Thus a discussion couched in terms of selflessness is a threat not so much to any particular tactic or strategy but rather a threat to the whole self-definition that drives the creation of the strategies themselves. It's huge, it's dangerous, and that's why it's nowhere.

---

Certainly our death cult rulers do not wish to have their actions viewed or discussed in this fashion, and their fear of this will be enough to ensure that selflessness is not in our lexicon. But this threat-nature of selflessness is only half the picture. The flipside of it all is that (forgetting all of the above momentarily) any people who only know, indeed can only think in terms of, me-me-me are far more easily dealt with. Rather than the bundle, they are the individual sticks - easily broken one by one. Thus the absence of selflessness in our lexicon is an absence of unity, or strength if you prefer. A ubiquitous mindset of me-me-me is the death cult's sword and shield both. And sure enough, for us selflessness can serve both these purposes also. It can be a defence and an offence. Quite right too, since as Bruce Lee declared, if you get it right they should be the same thing.


"Yeah okay nobody, brilliant, and another picture of Bruce Lee, but what are we supposed to do with this?" The answer to this is nothing, or nothing in particular. View it as a lens, a means of looking at the world. View as a foundation, a thing upon which to stand. View it as a martial arts form, a sense of balance, force, and direction that has no end in and of itself, but is merely applied to every physical, or in this case mental, action. Frankly, it's nothing more than mindfulness.

---

So as to cut off imagined counter arguments, let me say there is nothing to fear from it. It doesn't require you to be penniless, clad in sackcloth and ashes, an ascetic in a cave. Do that if you like, but don't imagine that it's demanded of you. There is nothing wrong with having stuff, but stuff-for-the-sake-of-it is idiotic, and obviously so. Stuff of this nature is the chunk of metal on which the oxide of fear and desire will form. But were you to look at your stuff and ask yourself how much utility it provides, and for how many people, it couldn't hurt. Van der Rohe's principle of 'less is more' is a design maxim, sure, but it's also a philosophical statement. Stuff will not bring you happiness and we all know it. On the other hand, it will bring you fear.


Selflessness is less about stuff than it is about the shedding of fear and desire. It's a mistake to assume otherwise. And as sure as eggs is eggs, the death cult media machine would, can, and does spend all its time and energy ensuring that you'll make precisely that mistake. It runs the gamut from Hollywood's Gordon Gecko absurdly declaring that greed is good to every other TV commercial telling you that "you deserve it." I don't know about you, but when I hear witless flattery like this, I know I'm being bullshitted to.

---

So our feet are on solid ground, our eyes are clear, our hand is open - now what? Now we take it to them. Ideas count - the death cult doesn't control the media for no reason. The battle is, and always has been, for the mind. All we need to do is offer an alternative that isn't yet more bullshit. And that's what selflessness is - an alternative to everything wicked and fucked up in this world.

There is no point opposing wickedness with some half-baked variation of its own theme. Opposing one fellow's version of me-me-me with your own version of it is, I don't know... idiotic? In a fucked up world it's just more of the same. Likewise, to replace one definition of us-and-them with another cannot and will not succeed. Brand X racism is not a better product than Brand Y racism. They're both shit products and to hell with the both of them.


Like it matters whether the union organisers in South America that were killed, were shot by death squads that belonged to coke or pepsi. Who gives a shit? Sure enough, preferring your own brand of racism to someone else's is like arguing over whether coke tastes better than pepsi, with the death squads neither here nor there. Fuck snipping around the edges, why not go big-picture and condemn it in its entirety?

There's no point opposing evil with evil. We are not members of a hate group. We are members of a love group (as cheesy as that sounds). We have nothing that can be misrepresented. The last thing we'll do is charge into a Holocaust museum with a gun. A tuppence for such thoughtless stupidity. In the battle for ideas, that old man just scored a point for the opposition.

It's the false ideas (otherwise known as delusions) that need to be smashed, not the purveyors of them. Without their delusions the wicked of this world are nothing. Shoot the wicked and the delusions live on. And whilst you can smash one delusion with another, indeed the history of the world has been one episode of this after another, it will never solve anything. The only thing that stands clean, untarnished, and unimpeachable is selflessness.

In this battle, selflessness has the ability to be the sword, the shield, the tactics, the strategy, the choice of the battleground, and even the morale of the troops and the banner they hold high. Does that sound like overblown bullshit? No need to take my word for it. The death cult PTB has already told us they fear it by disappearing the least mention of it from our vernacular / armoury.


Whilst they might do their best to have us forget that word, and then to substitute their own words (and thus fight the battle they know they can win) - they cannot disappear the thing itself. Selflessness is timeless, indestructible, impervious to whatever the motherfuckers bring.

If we boil it all down, and strip away the distractions, the only weapon the death cult has is fear and desire. Between that and selflessness, only one of them is worth having. Between delusion and seeing clearly; between the self and the all; between fear and desire and peace, love, and understanding, anyone who isn't bullshit has already arrived at the right place. Not forgetting of course, that wherever you go, there you are.

"Now we see if your Shaolin Being Sensible style can withstand my Wudang Shan Complete Idiot technique!"

I'm not sure what I'm on about here. But why don't I start with Bruce Lee? He was really something. Even if all he'd done was master fencing, regular Western boxing, and Wing Chun Kung Fu, he'd have been legendary. But he went beyond these and came up with own style, Jeet Kune Do. Did anyone ever wonder where Jeet Kune Do went? How come when you wander down to Chinatown there's no Jeet Kune Do schools? What was that all about?


I'll admit I'm no great expert on the martial arts. If anyone who is an expert wishes to pick holes in the following, fine. The comments are below. But let's carry on. As I understand it, Jeet Kune Do was not a martial art as such. It might be more accurate to describe it as a way of thinking, a philosophy. Jeet Kune Do did not have any kata (or what my school called 'form'). Nor did it have any particular stance. It did not say A is followed by B is followed by C and that this is how things are done. Whilst it didn't reject these things, it rejected the concept that 'this is how you must think', or perhaps that 'these are your limits'. Jeet Kune Do declared that there are no limits.

The logic here is simple. In fighting an opponent why come at him in a predictable fashion? Think of all those chop-socky movies you saw with the villain fighting in Praying Mantis style, switching to Kwan Lun Toad style, followed by Kung Pao Chicken style, etc etc. Each of these would be clearly demonstrated and invariably accompanied by the appropriate hissing, mad facial gestures, and the hero's announcement of, 'Oh, I see you know place-name-creature style!' Well that's the movies for you. Everything must be explained so that the punters know what's going on. But who would do that in a real fight?

In a real fight it would pay to have your opponent on the back foot with no idea what you're going to do next. Loosely that's what Bruce Lee was on about with Jeet Kune Do. Discard anything stale or predictable. Throw out limitations and constraints. Use whatever works. (And if I, great sage and equal of heaven, may add my own thoughts - keep your balance. Lose your balance and you're fucked. Bruce Lee would probably roll his eyes and say, 'Well, duh!', but let's carry on.)


This style of thinking need not be limited to physical fights. It's useful for all sorts of things besides smashing Mark Regev's teeth in. I know it's poor of me to have thoughts of violence fill my head every time he's on the television, but I just can't help it. As much as one would like to find oneself in a state of harmony with all people and things and become the Buddha it's a remote prospect. Meanwhile, here we are in the real world where arseholes like Mark Regev aren't any kind of exception. Instead they're as common as muck and seem to rule the air-waves and dominate the discussions. So repulsive, obnoxious, and omnipresent are they that right-thinking people turn away in disgust and leave them to it. Funnily enough, that's the whole idea.

In terms of argy-bargy of this nature, I started out on indymedia. Indymedia was founded in a spirit of right-thinking. It would be an open forum (emphatically unlike the mainstream media) wherein all things could be discussed by whomever. However, if a thing like this can be corrupted by the usual suspects, it will be, and it was. Everything connected with Israel became off-limits. Above and beyond all else the bloc-media is about totality. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be a bloc (stands to reason, no?) What indymedia failed to realise is that openness of this nature is also an openness to those who would deny that very thing. Totality will always strive for totality.

But there I was, however many years ago, unaware that this was how things were and attempting to have sensible discussions. What a waste of time. There were no sensible discussions to be had. I was talking to individuals who would pretend to be half a dozen people, all of whom would agree with each other. Arguments consisted almost entirely of ad hominem with the routine only being broken up by bare-faced lying, straw men, words-in-mouth, limited hangout and everything except argument-rebuttal-conclusion.

It's all so obvious now of course. The people I was arguing with, in spite of insisting that everyone follow the rules of decorum, didn't give a fig for the rules or for decorum. Back then I was confused. Why were these people here? What was their purpose? What did they hope to achieve? Without having a definitive answer, I'm inclined to think that they were there in a spirit of 'rejection of all that is not me', if that makes any sense. They were not there to explain the rightness of their views nor to have anyone come over to their way of thinking. Imagine a vampire movie where all the people have been turned into vampires. As they celebrate their victory, someone pipes up at the back, 'Yeah, but who are we going to eat now?' Damn!


The metaphoric vampires aren't there to convince anyone of anything apart from the fact that this topic is verboten. Yeah, well fuck that and fuck the hoops they hold up and demand I jump through. I refuse to follow some motherfucker's diktats. If proof is demanded I will ignore it and make my next point. I will leap from topic to topic. If the subject is Hamas rockets I will talk about: the ringworm scandal; the denial of compensation for Holocaust victims; Ehud Olmert bragging about telling the idiot son what to do. It's not their conversation. It's mine. And yes, the 'conversation' will not flow. Nothing will make sense. I will not make sense. Whatever is expected of me, I will refuse to deliver it.

Why not take this to its ultimate point? Why even fulfil the role of opposition? Why not simply be more them than them, if you can dig it. Subsequently I shall be the uber-fascist, the uber-racist, the motherfucker unvarnished. I shall strip away the niceties and say what they really think. I shall be Ariel Sharon screaming bloody murder and calling for the deaths of all who oppose me. What are they going to do? Agree with me? Oppose me? Who are they fighting precisely? Themselves?

I've done this on indymedia and was met with the same thing every time. Complete silence. Weirdly enough, the automatic response is a feeling of social rejection. 'I'm being ignored and no one wants to talk to me.' This is wrongheaded. Truth of the matter is that the motherfuckers have been put on the back foot. The conversation they thought was theirs has been seized from them. It now belongs to someone else and they don't want to be a part of it anymore. Excellent. And sure, the niceties of discourse have been trashed. But these niceties, as far as the motherfuckers are concerned, are things to be taken advantage of. Why stick with a thing that only serves your opponent?


And the last thing I'm going to do is take them seriously. If a thing is expected of me, I'm not going to give it to them. Nothing. Subsequently all they'll get from me is comedy. The role of the fool is a very powerful one. Comedians can get away with murder. Anyone who wants to get huffy over a joke they don't like is going to look like a dickhead. Remember, the point of the exercise for them is not to convince me. They're there to play to the crowd. Well, two can play at that game and we'll see who makes who look stupid.

Okay, so I'm crowing about myself. Cock-a-doodle-doo. But then again Bruce Lee wasn't exactly shy and retiring neither. Mind you, being cocksure and philosophical aren't mutually exclusive. No mistake, Bruce Lee was a philosopher. His dictum 'Be like water' shouldn't be written off as simplistic. It ain't. You cannot grab water. You cannot push it around. And as any body surfer knows, God help you in a dumper. Did you know that one cubic metre of water weighs a tonne? And okay sure, people build breakwaters and canals and pipes etc, but in the context of arguments, these constructs are illusory. If one refuses to concede their existence, they don't exist. It's as simple as that. Whatever rules there are, have invariably been laid down (like pipes are laid down) to suit those who did the plumbing. Like that's a surprise.


And me, I never signed up for this or any other bullshit academic version of Marquis of Queensbury.

Fuck other people's rules. I have my own. And if the defenders of genocide and the racist motherfuckers of this world don't care for how I go about things; my idiocy; my rude manner; my glee at heaping shit on them; my slippery refusal to be pinned down; or whatever fucking thing it is that they don't expect from me, to hell with them. I ain't going to give them what they want. Instead I'm going to dance around in my yellow stripey go-go suit with no form, no style, and no idea of what I'm going to do next. And if they don't get the gag what do I care? I laugh my head off regardless.